A team of researchers has discovered that not only brain cells store people’s memories, but other cells in many parts of the body can form and retain memories.
A new study shows that several parts of the body can form memories Photo pexels.com
The researchers looked at how non-brain cells contribute to memory, based on the massed-spaced effect. The study shows that people retain information more effectively when they learn it in sessions spread over time, than in one intensive session, writes EurekAlert.
During the research, the experts replicated the learning over time by studying two types of non-brain human cells in a laboratory (one from nerve tissue and one from kidney tissue). They were exposed to different patterns of chemical signals, in the same way that brain cells are exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters when we learn new information. In response, the non-brain cells activated a “memory gene”—the same gene that brain cells activate when they detect a pattern in information and restructure their connections to form memories.
To monitor the process of memory and learning, the researchers modified these non-brain cells to produce a fluorescent protein. With its help, the specialists identified when the “memory genre” was on and when it was off.
The results showed that these cells were able to differentiate when the chemical impulses, which mimicked the neurotransmitter impulses in the brain, were repeated rather than just prolonged – just as the neurons in our brains can record when we learn with pauses instead of “we learn on the last hundred meters”. Specifically, when the pulses were delivered in spaced intervals, they activated the “memory type” more strongly and for a longer period of time compared to the same treatment delivered all at once.
“This discovery opens new doors to understanding how memory works and could lead to better ways to improve learning and treat memory problems”said Nikolay V. Kukushkin, associate professor of life sciences at NYU Liberal Studies and researcher at NYU’s Center for Neural Sciences.
The research was led by Nikolay V. Kukushkin and Thomas Carew, a professor at NYU’s Center for Neural Science. Study authors also include Tasnim Tabassum, a researcher at NYU, and Robert Carney, a research associate at NYU at the time of the study. This was published in the journal Nature Communications, from New York University.
